World history knows many figures whose greed for easy money and excessive ambitions pushed them down the path of crime. As a rule, such business scams brought criminals obsessed with the desire to enrich themselves illegally to the dock.
The article tells about the most famous thieves on the planet from different times and countries, whose victims included even influential people, major investors, famous politicians, and business sharks.
Jerome Kerviel
A former employee of the French investment company Societe Generale, who worked there as a regular stock broker.
In an effort to become famous and have the fortune of a billionaire, this gentleman carefully studied the system of supervision of financial and banking transactions on stock exchanges, paying attention to all its nuances.
Kerviel began his illegal activities, which consisted of conducting risky transactions, in 2007. It is known that he resorted to using the mechanism of cardinal trading. As a result, the criminal opened positions in futures of European exchanges, the total amount of which amounted to 50 billion euros.
The scale of this grand scam could be envied the most famous scammers of all eras – the funds that Jerome appropriated exceeded the capitalization of the banking institution by one and a half times.
As a result of the relevant fraud, the bank's losses amounted to about 5 billion euros.
It is logical that Jerome Kerviel was brought to trial. The verdict was a three-year prison sentence and a two-year suspended sentence, and the court also ordered him to compensate for all financial losses and investments of the bank he worked for and robbed.
Bernard Madoff
A US citizen known as the founder of the world's largest financial pyramid with a total value of over $$64 billion.
He founded the investment company Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960 in the heart of the country's most successful businessmen, on Wall Street.
Bernard Madoff headed this financial enterprise for almost fifty years. Interestingly, for a long time this fraudster held the position of chairman of the board of directors of the NASDAQ stock exchange, and no one doubted his integrity.
The criminal scheme that this prominent swindler's firm operated under became apparent only in 2008, and its exposure occurred due to the global financial crisis. Madoff's company lost new depositors, so payments to previous investors stopped.
As a result, Bernard Madoff was charged with particularly large-scale money fraud and sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2019. It is clear that the criminal did not live to see his release - he died a couple of years after his imprisonment. At that time, the talented schemer was already 83 years old.
Anna Sorokina
Like some others financial scammers, this Russian-born person posed as a millionaire after moving to the United States and living in New York City.
The scammer introduced herself to her victims as Anna Delvi, telling them that her father owned a German trust fund worth almost $70 million.
Having gained the trust of the wealthiest Americans, Anna spent her leisure time with them, and then simulated blocking her card and asked her new friends for thousands of "greenbacks" in debt, which, of course, she never returned.
The end of the fraud of the false "millionaire" was put by the appeal of one of the victims of this lady to the police. She became Rachel Williams, who worked as a photo editor at the publication Vanity Fair. Anna deceived Rachel for 60 thousand dollars. When the fraudster was arrested, during the investigation it turned out that the total amount of her debt to hotels, banks and friends reached 275 thousand dollars.
In 2019, the fraudster was sentenced to 12 years and ordered by the court to pay off her debts. But Anna spent only about three years in prison, after which she was released "for good behavior."
Interestingly, Sorokina's story was filmed by Netflix, and to obtain the rights to it, the film company paid the attacker $320 thousand.
Shimon Hayut
This 29-year-old young man from Israel used a similar scheme of fraud to Sorokina. Anyone interested in the biggest scams should learn about him. financial scammers in history the last century.
Shimon's victims were gullible girls he seduced online, on Tinder and Instagram. This unscrupulous gentleman impersonated a real person - diamond magnate Simon Levaev.
The numerous beauties from whom the con artist skillfully swindled money over the course of four years had no idea that he was actually the son of the chief rabbi of El Aviv Airlines and lived in a small town near Tel Aviv.
Hayut's fraud consisted not only in fraudulently extorting funds into his account, but also in "returning" them using forged checks, the transfer of which into cash was impossible.
Among the victims who were defrauded of the largest sums by this fraudster, sometimes promising to marry the respective ladies, it is worth mentioning Pernilla Sjöholm ($50 thousand), Eileen Charlotte ($100 thousand) and Cecilia Fellhoy ($250 thousand).
Despite the obviousness of the crimes, it has still not been possible to bring this "polygamous" swindler to justice: after all, he carried out all his machinations outside of Israel, where he still lives.
Elizabeth Holmes
A fraudster who conceived her fraudulent project at the age of 19, as a student at Stanford University, during a summer internship in Singapore. In this country, Elizabeth was engaged in testing blood samples from a vein.
The scammer allegedly invented a device that allows you to take blood for analysis painlessly, without using a needle or puncture. This device looked like a compact armband. After the project was approved by the university, Holmes initiated a fundraising campaign to bring her "invention" to life.
Elizabeth managed to raise $6 million through advertising and various connections, and then she told investors that the project was impossible to implement due to the lack of the necessary technologies to produce her invention. Instead, she informed investors about the production of another device - a stationary mini-blood analyzer without a needle, which would supposedly detect oncological, venereal, cardiac diseases and diabetes.
Like other financial scammers, Elizabeth Holmes was not without charisma and the ability to inspire trust. The fraudster's machinations lasted from 2004 to 2018 before they were exposed. The trial of the swindler lasted from 2021 to 2022. His sentence was the deprivation of the fraudster of liberty for 11 years.
Charles Ponzi
The world knows him as a notorious American criminal and founder of pyramid schemes in Canada and the United States.
Ponzi's criminal "business" consisted of paying very high profits to depositors at the expense of investments by new investors who ultimately lost their money.
Charles was born in Italy, in 1903. When he was 19, the boy arrived in Boston with empty pockets, because during this journey he lost money.
This young man started his own business quite legally in Montreal, where he earned quite a bit by selling cigars. But the ambitious entrepreneur wanted more income. Then he came up with the idea of offering immigrants from Italy “profitable” financial services. While the bank rate was 2%, Ponzi promised investors interest rates three times higher.
The criminal activity of the schemer ended with him stealing the depositors' funds and fleeing with them to Mexico.
One of the largest financial pyramids was organized in the United States by this swindler, who from time to time ended up in prison for his scams. This fraud was related to the sale of postage stamps. It is known that history of financial scams Ponzi ended with 3 years in prison and confiscation of assets. His victims were over 40,000 defrauded investors.
Arthur Ferguson
A talented swindler from the beginning of the last century who managed to sell England's national monuments to gullible travelers.
Among the valuables he "sold," the sale of which is absurd, were Buckingham Castle and the legendary Big Ben. For these architectural gems, the cunning attacker received 2,000 and 1,000 pounds sterling from tourists, respectively.
Later, Ferguson managed to "rent" the White House in the US capital to a Texan banker. Arthur earned about $2 million from this scam.
This ingenious con artist of Scottish origin was caught while trying to sell the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The swindler faced life imprisonment, but a lucky chance helped him reduce this term to 5 years. During the judicial investigation, it turned out that Ferguson once gave all his money to a Texas widow. This woman's house was destroyed by fire.
Victor Lusting
To the category «the biggest financial frauds in history"This scammer didn't get caught by accident."
He was first prompted to commit a fraud unheard of in the world by a newspaper article about the lack of funds in the Paris budget to maintain the Eiffel Tower.
Lusting came up with a plan to sell this architectural symbol of the French capital for scrap metal. Surprisingly, a scrap metal customer was found for such an acquisition. He was a gullible businessman, André Poisson.
History is silent about the exact amount that this gullible businessman paid the attacker as a result of the "partnership" agreement with him, but it is known that it was a whole suitcase of banknotes.
And having become a victim of the insidious swindler Lusting, Poisson did not go to the police because of his own shyness.
However, Victor was not so lucky with the next buyer of the Eiffel Tower: in the end, the "clever" businessman ended up in prison.
Christopher Rockaunt
This attractive, charismatic, and sociable man, who posed as a member of the Rockefeller family and Bill Clinton's best friend, was responsible for a number of large-scale financial scams.
Among them was the sale of luxury real estate, which, of course, the fraudster in question did not own. As a result of such a deal, which was rigged in France, Rocount earned $1.4 million.
Later, in 1991, the criminal resorted to robbing a prestigious jewelry salon in Geneva, where he stole hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs worth of jewelry.
Throughout his criminal career, Christopher enjoyed the support of his wife, who was the thief's accomplice in criminal cases, Maria Pia Reyes, and before marrying him, she worked as a model for Playboy.
Rockout is also known for defrauding many single wealthy ladies by seducing and then robbing them. But even more often, the perpetrator's victims were business sharks who were happy to provide loans to the fake "Rockefeller".
The end of the beautiful life of Christopher and his charming accomplice in 2001. During the investigation, after which the couple was imprisoned, the defendant admitted that he had robbed his victims of a total of $40 million.
Joseph Whale
This swindler started his first scams when he was still a teenager. They were related to the sale of glasses with frames that Joseph passed off as gold.
And Wale managed to enter the criminal history of the world thanks to the counterfeiting of an entire bank. The criminal, having heard the news about the relocation of the National Commercial Bank, resorted to opening a fictitious banking institution in a rented building.
The staff of this simulated financial institution were gangsters from Chicago, who showed excellent acting skills, portraying office workers. Thus, by accepting money "in the cash register" from gullible citizens, Joseph and his accomplices enriched themselves by millions.
It is also known that this schemer managed to sell non-existent land to a local billionaire for $500,000 and encourage the famous dictator Benito Mussolini to buy mining rights in Colorado, which in fact were nowhere near there.
Interestingly, the life of Joseph Whale, who loved not only to steal money but also to ruthlessly spend it on various cool whims, ended at the age of 101.
Other famous financial scammers
There are many other fraudsters who have left their mark on the world history of financial fraud. Among them, it is worth mentioning: Sergey Mavrodi, known as the organizer of the financial pyramid "MMM", which increased the savings of about 15 million Russians. He became "famous" for forging bank checks and cashing them throughout the United States Frank Abigail. A brilliant thief of the pre-revolutionary time is also considered Sofia Ivanovna Blyuvshtein, who had the nickname “Sonka of the Golden Pen“.
